The PAC to End All PACs Is a Farce

But much of the evidence for the New Hampshire-is-different argument comes from musty stereotypes about flinty New Hampshire presidential primary voters and gauzy memories of John McCain’s 2000 primary win over George W. Bush. As pollster Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, put it in an interview, “I don’t think New Hampshire is any more sensitive to campaign finance issues than anywhere else in the country.”

Even though Mayday PAC has not yet started advertising on behalf of Shea-Porter, she unquestionably measures up to Lessig’s criteria. Her campaign website, for example, lists “Campaign Finance Reform” as her top issue as she details her backing for measures ranging from full disclosure of Super PAC donors to public financing of campaigns.

Representing a district (NH-1) evenly split along party lines, Shea-Porter is a canary-in-the-coal-mine incumbent hypersensitive to political winds. Elected in the 2006 Democratic sweep, she lost her seat in the 2010 Republican wave only to regain it in 2012 on Barack Obama’s coat-tails. Her likely GOP opponent is former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta, who ran against her in 2010 and 2012. “Neither Shea-Porter nor Guinta are terribly impressive on the stump,” Smith told me. “If it’s a good Republican year, Guinta wins. And right now, it’s looking like a good Republican year.”

How about North Carolina? In an effort to underscore its bipartisanship, Mayday PAC has also endorsed GOP incumbent Walter Jones (he backs public financing) in the state’s safely Republican third district. But the threat to Jones’ reelection has already passed since he survived a bitter primary against a Tea Party challenger. In fact, had Mayday PAC been around to advertise on his behalf in the May primary, Jones probably would have lost votes because of his association with Lessig, a liberal Harvard professor.

The last congressional race where Mayday PAC has so far made an endorsement is the battle for a Republican-held open seat in Iowa’s third district. Their anointed candidate is former Democratic state senator Staci Appel, who supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

But unlike Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Appel is not running on campaign reform. Her website does not even mention the subject in its rundown of issue positions. And her first television ad flicks at a wide range of issues (creating jobs, balancing the budget, pre-kindergarten, raising the minimum and pay equity for women) without devoting three seconds to the words “campaign finance reform.”

What Appel’s campaign illustrates is not cynicism about fighting big money in politics, but rather that candidates and their consultants know what issues work for them politically—and which don’t. A Super PAC, even a well-intentioned one, is guilty of arrogance when it tries to impose its issues on a candidate stressing different campaign themes.

Maybe the best way to look at Lessig’s Mayday PAC is not as an $8-million electoral juggernaut, but rather as a piece of political performance art. It is more likely to demonstrate the limited power of Super PAC political spending than it is to galvanize a national crusade for campaign finance reform.

Billionaires running amok in politics are a terrible outgrowth of Citizens United. But without a massive grassroots political movement or an ongoing scandal that wipes everything else off Facebook and Twitter, it seems impossible for a Super PAC (even one with $80 million rather than $8 million) to make voters care about the rise of Super PACs.

Walter Shapiro is a veteran political columnist who teaches political science at Yale and is looking forward to covering his tenth presidential race. He is also finishing a book on his con-man great uncle called Hustling Hitler: How a Jewish Vaudevillian Fooled the Fuhrer for Blue Rider Press.